Now is the moment for contemplatives.  But what a vibrant presence we should have in the world,

and in the depth of our silence.  Not an escape, but a penetration to the very heart.

This is what now I should like to understand and to make

understood–and, most of all, to live.

Respect for contemplative values in the world

will not come because we preach about them,

but because in our life of deep silence we are totally human.

from ABHISIKTANANDA, ed. by James Stuart